Please Read, Respond and Repost

My name is Fernando Quinones. I am a twenty two year old dance major at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. I'm sure most of you have heard about the tragic suicides that have taken place in the last week. I am saddened, heartbroken and I feel a sense of responsibility for the deaths of those boys. I have always felt a need to speak up against the violence and hatred that goes in our schools and in our everyday lives as gay men. Maybe its insecurity but I have never stood up and voiced my opinion. Last week proved to me that I, that we, must take a stand and I am too late in asking this favor of you. Please listen to what I have to say. If I asked the world sooner, maybe those beautiful six boys would be alive today.

I humbly ask you to read, respond and repost using the original link, a note I posted on facebook. I have been receiving postive responses from many people asking me to spread this message. It is my hope that even one child can read what I have written and not feel so alone. It is my goal to spread this message far and wide so that all little gay boys and little gay girls can feel loved.

I am not a political person. I'm just another gay man, student, and person in this world trying to make my way in life. But something has called from within to help others. I will admit to feeling vulnerable in this post. I have been on this site before. Many of you are insightful, intelligent, and good natured. I have faith that you will help me. If others should feel differently about what I have to say, I ask that you ignore this post. Just know that I come with good intentions and simply ask for your help. It would be a great service to me and those gays after us to spread this humble message of hope and peace. There will always be some sort of prejudice and discrimination in this world and I am mature enough to know we will not see the end of it even well after all of us are dead and gone. But, we can make it easier, even if a little bit, for those gays after us.

I know there are some grammatical errors and some phrasing could be edited to sound better but it is an honest and heartfelt response.

If anyone can help me take this message on a grand scale to send this message to many people all over the world, please help me!

***If you were tagged in this note, please do not be offended with it's contents. I realize that some of you are near perfect strangers to me and it may seem awkward to be tagged in a note such as this one. When I log onto my facebook account, my home page is peppered with your updates and going ons. I have decided to tag people who I felt have many 'friends' who love and adore them and speak highly of. It is my hope that by tagging you in my note, you will repost on your page, setting off a chain reaction and the message that I am trying to send out, a message of love, understanding and acceptance, is spread. So if you've been tagged, please tag others who you think will spread this message or alternatively, tag those who you feel NEED to hear this message. It is not mandatory to do so and if you wish, you may detag yourself.*** - Fernando Quinones

When I was 13, I attended Raub Middle School in Allentown, Pa. I would wake up every morning and make the barely ten minute trek to school. There were things that I grew accustomed to greeting me every morning while on my short excursion. There was the old man on chew street who would just be getting into his red truck. He never said good morning as he was too busy loading all his tools into the back of his ride. If the truck wasn't there, I knew I was late for school. Only one block further was the large brown fence that hid the dog that every morning without fail, would bark so loud my heart would stop. It possessed a bark so menacing, I thought a dog more rabid than Cujo lived behind it. I would pass by the Cohen family home, where all seven siblings would all pack themselves into their moms huge SUV and make their way to the catholic school they attended. I grew familiar with the odd porch decorations some people felt they needed to have on display. I memorized phone numbers to businesses I never cared to enter, just because I saw the store signs everyday. I made up names to the stray cats I would encounter day in and day out. My favorite was Oliver. Whatever fur the feral creature had left was orange and mangled, and he had but one eye.

I recently made my way back to Allentown this past summer. It's funny how things change, and even funnier when they don't. The old mans truck is there, but it's green now. The rabid dog behind the fence? Yup, still there. His bark hasn't lost it's satanic spark at all. The Cohens don't live in the same house anymore, but instead they moved across the street. The phone numbers I memorized now have area codes and the porch decorations are still as zany as they were almost ten years ago, just a little weathered. Oliver didn't make an appearance, but I'm sure he's cleaned himself up, found a nice feline and is a family man now.

There was something else very different about the path I took to school. I couldn't put my finger on it. What felt so different to me? I went back and rummaged through the shoebox of memories in my mind. There at the very bottom of the box I found what it was. The faint but very permanent etching of my past presented itself to me. As I said, the walk to school wasn't even a whole ten minutes. If I was late, it was just a four minute race to homeroom! But to a 13 year old like me, a gay 13 year old, who doesn't fully understand what being gay means, it felt like an eternity. What made my walk so long? What made it treacherous?

It was the constant teasing by the other students walking to the same school. It was the lethal insults hurled from the lips of other children. Fire was spewing and shooting from the deepest bowels of hate and into my heart and soul. Words like 'Faggot', 'Queer', and 'Cocksucker' were what people defined me as. School days felt forever long. Every class seemed to drag on and on and on. I didn't have to look, but I could feel the other kids whispering behind my back. I was too scared to answer questions everyone else was too dumb to know because some jerk would hint at the effeminate inflections in my voice, erupting the room in laughter. I couldn't walk down the halls without someone yelling out, 'Look, he walks like a faggot!'. It wasn't the most pleasant experience being told by fellow peers when learning about STD's that because I was a faggot, I would be doomed to AIDS and die. We had the same teachers, we had the same classrooms, we ate the same crap cafeteria food, but because I was slightly different I was their target. When the school bell rang indicating school was out, I ran home as fast I could in hopes of dodging the soul sucking bullets of insult. My vain attempts never worked. Stick and stones may break my bones, but words cut like a knife.

This treatment I recieved by my peers hurt me in so many ways. Not just emotional, but psychologically as well. I was in a constant fight against the feelings I felt towards other boys. I kept telling myself how wrong they were, how disgusting they were, how horrible they were. Not only did my peers turn against me, but now I was doing the same thing. I was at war with myself. I criticized everything I did. I could'nt wear clothes a certain way, I had to speak in a certain tone, I had to walk a certain way, all in the hopes of changing who I was because I had had enough of the way I was being treated. I stopped m